Chaos Choreography – Seanan Mcguire – I just love these books. I’ve written about previous installments of the InCryptid series before and they just keep getting better. In this installment, we’re back with Verity, and her now husband, they’re settling down. She gets an opportunity to dance again and it’s an offer she can’t refuse. Unfortunately, her dance life and her incryptid life seem determined to collide. I still want a whole other series about the singular most interesting side characters on the planet – Aeslin mice. But for now I’ll just settle for lots more of these.

The Rest of Us Just Live Here – Patrick Ness– I haven’t been able to get into much of Ness’ stuff, but I really enjoyed this one. Told from the POV of what would normally be ancillary characters, there is a small snippet at the beginning of each chapter that shows what is happening in the storyline that would normally be the focus, then goes on to tell the story of the characters who aren’t part of that. (Did that make sense?) It reminded me of Redshirts which I really enjoyed. This is a bit darker and more of a message but it’s still something I would recommend.

Marked in Flesh – Anne Bishop– Another installment of a series I love! (no seriously, LOVE) I love the new take on inter-species relationships, and I love that humans are not dominant here. In this book (the fourth in the series) the humans really get their comeuppance; because humans are a**holes and think they deserve everything the older than everything supernatural creatures put them in their place. And of course our main characters continue on their journeys as well. There are enough characters now that it’s getting a little bit difficult to keep track of who’s doing what but maybe killing off most of the human population will fix that. ::wink::

Revisionary – Jim Hines –This series is just so insanely clever and wonderful and weird that once I pick it up I refuse to put it down. This book picks up almost a year after the apocalyptic ending of the last book and a lot has changed. I don’t want to spoil it but suffice it to say that the world is exactly as you’d expect it to be. Our hero has still not learned his limits and his nearest and dearest have to come to his rescue a lot. If you haven’t read the first one of this series yet I suggest you hustle to the nearest book provider and pick it up.

Read

Ex-Heroes – Peter Clines – I’d really enjoyed Clines’ other work so I hunted this down. It wasn’t as good or revolutionary as I had hoped though. Zombies and super heroes collide in this world, and while that’s cool, it jumped around a lot and was hard to follow at times. So many characters to keep track of, that adding a non-linear element made it lose momentum. So I pushed through and finished it but I’m not planning on picking up any others in the series.

Brightly Burning – Mercedes Lackey – Just read the Valdemar books. This is a stand alone book about a character who gets mentioned a lot in later books but has never had his story told. And it’s sad, have the tissues ready!

Preternatural Affairs (Witch Hunt, Silver Bullet, Hotter than Helltown)- SM Reine – One of those free Kindle series, which as I started I realized I’d already read the first book. So I skipped ahead. What I love about these kinds of books is that I don’t feel compelled to finish them and so it’s easy to put them down and turn off the light and go to sleep. I know that doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement but it’s true. Anyway, these are about a guy who works for the supernatural FBI and for reasons that are unclear his life takes a complete left turn because someone murders a woman and frames him. There’s a lot of interesting mythology and explosions and fun tropes.

Bound by a Dragon – Linda Hopkins – This book is kind of terrible, I don’t even know why I finished it. It’s pretty chauvinistic, even for a book set in Middle Ages-esque. A man/dragon falls in love at first sight with a woman rapidly headed towards spinsterhood who’s only prospect is an asshat who regularly tries to assault her. It’s incredibly predictable and just not good.

The Long Way Down – Craig Schaefer – About a man (wizard?) in Las Vegas who is also kind of a PI and a do-gooder who gets sucked into a vast conspiracy and has to save the world. Sounds familiar – but this really does a good job of taking traditional stories and overhauling them in a way that feels fresh. It’s gritty and dark but overall enjoyable.

Strange Magic – James Hunter – Another wizard book (surprise! lol) and another reluctant hero using his magic and his friends to defeat a bad guy. Another hero who sacrifices himself (or tries to sacrifice himself) for the greater good, even though the greater good hasn’t done anything for him lately. I did enjoy the twist on traditional magic use (yay for physics!) and the grit of the main character.